We told you so: crypto-Trotskyism in Nepal, and elsewhere
(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)
For years, our movement has been exposing the Trotskyism within the onetime Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) organizations. And, before us, the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) had thoroughly exposed the RCP USA, affiliated with the RIM, as crypto-Trotskyist. However, these criticisms were often met with blank stares from the majority of those claiming to be Marxist-Leninist or even Maoist. The lack of outcry over such blatant revisionism is because the ideological level is so low within the so-called international communist movement. It is so low that very few understand the main differences between Trotskyism and Marxism, or Kautskyism and Marxism for that matter. Not one peep from all the self-styled “anti-revisionists,” “Marxist-Leninists,” “Stalinists,” “Hoxhaists,” and “Maoists.” Besides ourselves, and a recent criticism from the Communist Party of India (Maoist) (CPI (Maoist)), only one other group noticed the Trotskyism within the RIM: the Trotskyists. The Trotskyists themselves, or, at least some of them, have taken an interest in the Trotskyism of the RIM affiliated organization in Nepal. An article from the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) states:
“Now in Nepal there is a growing interest in the theory of the Permanent Revolution. The fact that a Maoist leader has recognised that ‘in the current context of globalised capitalist domination, Trotskyism has become more relevant than Stalinism’ is an extremely interesting development. With this debate there is also a clear step towards building links with other movements and organisations that challenge capitalism globally. It is in fact the duty of Marxists everywhere to debate and discuss the correct tactics and strategy for the revolution internationally.” (1)
The article quotes Baburam Bhattarai approvingly. Baburam Bhattarai is second only to Prachanda in the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (UCPN(M)):
“Today, the globalization of imperialist capitalism has increased many-fold as compared to the period of the October Revolution. The development of information technology has converted the world into a global village. However, due to the unequal and extreme development inherent in capitalist imperialism this has created inequality between different nations. In this context, there is still (some) possibility of revolution in a single country similar to the October revolution; however, in order to sustain the revolution, we definitely need a global or at least a regional wave of revolution in a couple of countries. In this context, Marxist revolutionaries should recognize the fact that in the current context, Trotskyism has become more relevant than Stalinism to advance the cause of the proletariat”. (2)
None of this is too surprising to the very few paying attention. In the early 1980s, for example, Bob Avakian of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA (RCP (USA)), a founder of the RIM, openly abandoned the global people’s war outlook of Lin Biao and replaced it with Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution. (2) (3) These movements dress themselves up with Mao. They beat their chests claiming to support the Cultural Revolution. Yet, in reality, they oppose both. They are “Maoist” at the most superficial level. By contrast, at every turn, only the Maoist- Third Worldist movement has correctly led the international communist movement. We told you so.
Sources
1. http://www.marxist.com/communist-party-nepal-recognises-role-of-trotsky.htm
2. http://www.marxist.com/communist-party-nepal-recognises-role-of-trotsky.htm Quote originally from The Red Spark. July 2009, Issue 1, Page-10. Translated by the IMT.
3. Bob Avakian. For a Harvest of Dragons. RCP Publications. USA:1983. p 150-151. . Avakain rejected the people’s war view in For a Harvest of Dragons:
4. Bob Avakian. Conquer the World. http://rwor.org/bob_avakian/conquerworld/#section_II In Conquer the World, Avakian plagerizes Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution.
That he would use the term “Stalinist” is enough to raise red flags.
As Lenin said:
“There is one, and only one, kind of real internationalism, and that is—working whole-heartedly for the development of the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle in one’s own country, and supporting (by propaganda, sympathy, and material aid) this struggle, this, and only this, line, in every country without exception.”
(Lenin, ‘The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution,’ 1917 in Collected Works, Vol. 24, Progress Publishers, 1964.)
I fail to see how such a policy could not be put into effect in Nepal under a genuinely Communist leadership.
“If you are unable to adapt yourself, if you are not inclined to crawl on your belly in the mud, you are not a revolutionary but a chatterbox; and I propose this, not because I like it, but because we have no other road, because history has not been kind enough to bring the revolution to maturity everywhere simultaneously.” (Lenin, ‘Political Report of the CC to the Extraordinary Seventh Congress of the RCP(B),’ March 7 1918, Collected Works, Vol 27).
MIM, when they mattered, before they became really weird, correctly criticized Avakian for his attacks on “Lin Biaoism.” Whatever one feels about the individual Lin Biao, one must admit that the worldwide people’s war was always associated closely with Maoism. People’s war was a key component of Maoism. RCP’s labeling of people’s war as “Lin Biaoism” was an attempt to destroy Maoism. It was shameful that almost nobody stood up to criticize Avakian for his attacks on people’s war. Nobody called out Avakian’s Trotskyism either. Nobody else defended Maoism. Only MIM. They deserve praise for that. What is shocking is that Avakian was trashing Maoism at the same time he was trying to assert his leadership in his Maoist international. The whole thing is bizarre. There were all these debates over MLMTT versus MLM, but one of the main people in the “MLM” camp was trashing people’s war and pushing permanent revolution.
Baburam Bhattarai is on the right-wing of the UCPN(M) – the line struggle is still continuing within the Party. I think it’s too early to call it out one way or the other. Furthermore, this was not reported in the Nepalese press or by any other news agency, it was reported by the IMT who openly look for saviors from the exterior. They claim that Hugo Chavez personally supports them and looks to them for revolutionary guidance! They mis-spell UCPN(M) in the article, too. There is something wrong with this piece. It wouldn’t surprise me if B. became somewhat of a Trotskyist, though, given his overall line.
In one way, this is a positive development: the U”C”PN(“M”) now avows Trotskyism and rejects “Stalinism.” At least the U”C”PN(“M”) is being honest about its revisionist position. Now it should also have the honesty to stop calling itself “Maoist.”
Leninism is undialectical (see my blog: http://comrademartinlovesyou.blogspot.com/) – should we be at all surprised that the imaginary line dividing Trotskyism, Maoism, Juche, “Stalinism”, etc. can be so easily blurred in “revolutionary” movements of the developing world?
The Imperialized/underdeveloped world’s nations are capable only of varying models by which to achieve Imperialist/developed status – no model of “Communism” is possible, despite the “Communalist” tendencies of near-total poverty in various communities of oppressed peoples.
History has offered no example to the contrary, and provides ample evidence that the free market Capitalist model is superior to the state-owned Capitalist model. An illustrative graph can help reveal this trend: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Prc1952-2005gdp.gif
Only after the development of wage-labor relationships can the conditions for a “free and equal association of producers” be laid down and the notion of Communism as a possibility be entertained. This suggestion was proven by such examples as the Paris Commune of 1871, and Hungary of 1956.
Check out this article on the Commune (as viewed by Leninists versus Marx): http://thecommune.wordpress.com/ideas/the-commune-paris-1871/
Of course Lenin himself used to regularly ask for whom?
For example the state?
In this cases development good for which class?
And for humanity?
Capitalists will show you graphs demonstrating all kinds of great development achieved by capitalism over the last few hundred years .
Good for whom?
The result of all this capitalist “development” in the world and in capitalist China today , Is that the majority of the worlds people subsist on a couple of bucks a day.
Some developement!
You find this graph from wikipedia something to cheer about!
Because developed China has been now developed to deliver up surplus value and products to the rich first world and not development that serves its own people.
Development for whom ?
Is the question Marxists are interested in.
In a way this is much ado about nothing. The UCPN(M) have long drawn on Trotsky’s Permmanent Revolution, just as the RCP did in Conquer the World. So now their main theorist admits it? Big deal. Marxists already knew this. MIM , IRTR and MSH thoroughly covered this ground. Even the CP India (Maoist) has now echoed the MTW movement calling the UCPN(M) out on their Trotskyism in one of their statements.
The goobers are trying to deny the statement is real, as if the Trotskyism of the UCPN(M) hinged on the statement. That’s not how it works. Much of the RIM, including the UCPN(M), was infected with Trotsky’s Permanent Revolution theory. The RCP outlined the approach back in 1981. It was a cornerstone of RCP for decades. What RCP is going to do now that the RIM, their 4th international, seems to be unrepairably split is a mystery.
So you have a bunch of Trotskyist clowns in denial about their Trotskyism. At least the UCPN(M) can admit its intellectual debts.
“The Imperialized/underdeveloped world’s nations are capable only of varying models by which to achieve Imperialist/developed status – no model of “Communism” is possible, despite the “Communalist” tendencies of near-total poverty in various communities of oppressed peoples.”
This is Trotskyite kkkrap. The line between Leninism-Maoism and Trotskyism (and other forms of revisionism) is made clear by the above First Worldist garbage coming from this “Comrade” Martin on the one hand, and the hardcore class analysis coming from MSH on the other hand. Like the counter-revolutionary Leon Trotsky before him, “Comrade” Martin denies that the actual proletariat (consisting of “The Imperialized/underdeveloped world’s nations” as “Comrade” Martin describes them) is capable of leading the charge towards a classless world; all in the interest of so-called “real” workkkers in Appalachia (or on Wall St., for that matter!). What the fuck happened to the notion that the class with the “least to lose” from the current global imperialist order was the class to bring communism for this phony and others like him?
Also, on “Comrade” Martin’s characterization of Leninism in his supposed “defense” of Marx and Engels: They are the EXACT SAME ATTACKS on Marx and Engels themselves by the so-called “anarchists” Bakunin and Proudhon in the First International.
And who cares whether we’re promiscuous “Free Love” hipsters or if we “are sexless social outcasts, anyhow”? What we’re saying TODAY on MSH is scientifically accurate regardless of how or when we get our jollies. Snide comments like that are subjectivist, pornographic pig-bait.
Red Robespierre, Karl Marx’s starting point was that all social activity is nothing but a form of scientific material activity – following the same laws as all matter in motion.
If any variant of Lenin’s ideology (be it Trotskyist or Maoist) is correct, social activity is NOT bound by the law of motion of matter, but determinant upon the quality of the “ideas” in play. That is, you all posit the same basic point: if the IDEAS of the CPN are not the same as yours, they are “revisionist” (or in Trot lexicon, “deformed” or “degenerate”.) How do you explain the origins of revisionism, degeneration, or deformation? By the evolution of ideas *completely independent* of a material base. Maoism is but the final evolution of this idealism, arising as it did from the leader of a peasant revolution.
To you, and to all Leninists, material development is irrelevent: ideas reign supreme, and ideas determine reality. Consciousness determines being; the inversion of science.
That’s why you are capable of believing that the toppling of a minor league monarch by a band of guerillas in a largely semi-Feudal, barely proto-Capital country is capable of a leap to a post-Capitalist, advanced Communist society of abundance *if only they aren’t revisionists!*
“An empty drum beats the loudest” – Mao
Nonsense. Revisionist ideas are those that masquerade as Marxist while departing from Marxist science. To the extent that we can decide what is or is not Marxist science, we can decide what is or is not revisionist.
We’re not going to waste time arguing with overt anti-Leninists here.
“Comrade” Martin, if what you are saying about Leninism is true than basically you have 250 years of nothing to show for it. You’ve got it all backwards: it is for you that ideas reign supreme.
I don’t understand your beef with Trotsky. It sounds like he would be right up your alley. Everything you are saying is straight up, 100% Trotskyism. Trotsky after all was an opponent of Leninism!
Mike Ely at the Kasama Project put up an article of Nando Sims’ criticizing the idea that this was a Trotskyist deviation. Sims’ argument is that “socialism in one country” is not a universal claim and that the isolation and backwardsness of Nepal might require concessions to the world economy and a project of relying on and encouraging international revolutionary developments. He argues that the same point could be made without reference to Trotsky, but that referencing Trotsky is fine because we shouldn’t be dogmatic and so on. It seems like a stretch of a position to me.
http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/on-rumors-of-nepali-maoists-trotskyism-and-socialism-in-one-country/
Certainly the socialist revolution in any region will have its own particular features, according to local conditions. Maoists have never denied that. Sandwiched between two giant hegemonic comprador states, Nepal would have to create its own scientific strategies for defending and developing socialism.
But those strategies do not include calling off the people’s war, surrendering all arms to the “U”N, imprisoning the people’s army in concentration camps, or repudiating Marxism.
What is going on here is that the UCPNM is coming up with more excuses to abandon the revolution. Bringing up Trotsky is a way of saying that revolution needs to be put on the back burner until global conditions are ripe, until there is revolution in an “advanced” nation with advanced enough productive forces to paternally guide the Third World revolutions into the future. It’s a way of putting things on hold indefinitely in Nepal while they are waiting for a savior from the West. The revisionists in Nepal may have broken with Avakian over some minor spat,but they still uphold much of his theory. Avakian copied Trotsky when he said that you can’t sustain revolution in the Third World, so you have to wait for the global revolution, the revolution in the countries with advanced productive forces. And the revisionists in Nepal copy Avakian.
This is unfair critics. Why you entirely rely on Trotskiyist source? Accuracy of a translation, context, evidence of publication itself – all this may be forged. Have we any confirmation from independent sources?
Speeches of Prachandists contains much of revisionism–but this argument seems odd for them.
Just because the translation is from a Trotskyist source does not mean that it should automatically be discounted.
Firstly, this quote has been circulating the internet for a long time now. It has provoked a stir. Yet nobody has been able to disprove the quote. There are plenty of people who are capable of reading the original, yet none of them have come forward to say that the quote is fake. Let’s be honest here, if it was a fake, then there would be plenty of people jumping into this discussion with their corrections.
Secondly, this quote fits entirely with the line of the Prachandists. Even the CP India (Maoist) have criticized the UCPN(M) as Trotskyist.
The Prachandaists are trying to push revolution off of the table. This is the reason for their Kautskyism. And this is the reason for their Trotskyism. They are subtly advancing the idea that external conditions and internal conditions make revolution, even New Democratic revolution, impossible, in Nepal.
Waving a red flag does not make one a communist.